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McCann Erickson had a stellar year in 2006 in terms of b-to-b account wins, campaigns and growth. McCann Erickson is part of McCann Worldgroup, which also owns media agency UniversalMcCann, direct and relationship agency MRMWorldwide and other agencies specializing in health care, public relations and branding. It won several important b-to-b accounts in 2006, including the personal computer business of Hewlett-Packard Co. in the U.S., Asia and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), estimated at $230 million, and the Nortel Networks account, estimated at $50 million.

"The whole b-to-b area, for the total company, is doing very, very well," said John Dooner, chairman-CEO of McCann Worldgroup. "B-to-b is now a majority of our business."

McCann Erickson's client list includes some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Hitachi, Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Wireless.

"B-to-b is the largest growth sector for us," Dooner said. "Today, marketing innovation is being led by b-to-b marketers, particularly the technology companies."

Last year, McCann Erickson launched several campaigns for Microsoft, including "People-Ready Business," a $500 million effort, and integrated campaigns for Microsoft Visual Studio and Windows Mobile.

The agency also spent a large part of 2006 preparing for the launch of Vista, Microsoft's new operating system that was released to businesses in November and to consumers in January, and Office 2007, which will debut this month.

" `People-Ready' was a major new initiative for Microsoft, designed to reach business decision-makers and C-level executives, whom Microsoft had never really had a dialogue with before," said Matt Ross, president of McCann Worldgroup, San Francisco, the global headquarters for the Microsoft account, as well as the accounts of HP and other high-tech clients.

One unique feature of the "People Ready" campaign was the development of online "engagement centers"—specialized content areas for business customers developed with publishing partners such as The Wall Street Journal.

The online engagement centers have attracted up to 10 million visitors a month, Ross said.

McCann also created a Web site called 400plusdifferences.com for the launch of Visual Studio 2005, featuring a series of online videos that show how Visual Studio makes a difference in the lives of developers.

The online videos can be e-mailed to colleagues, and they are proving to have high engagement metrics. The average visit time on the site is four minutes and forty seconds, and users that watched at least one video viewed an average of nine videos.

McCann also used online videos for client Hitachi in a campaign called "True Stories." The videos, running on www.hitachi.us/truestories, feature Hitachi customers across America in such industries as medical, telecommunications and technology showing how the company's products have affected their lives.

In January alone, the videos received more than 430,000 views, with an average viewing time of more than three minutes.

"Entertainment engages, and entertainment sells," Ross said. "People will grant you a tremendous amount of time if you make it rewarding and worthwhile."